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Found this photo of a strange crawler in forest duty, Speed Cat. Photo was taken in the States. Does anyone have any information about this strange crawler? Photo taken in 1932 according to archive notes.
Thanks

It looks like the track pads are attached to 3 cables. Kind of a stepping stone to the steel belted rubber tracks of today. It's a neat design and sharp looking crawler. I'd be curious to see one operational.

My observation would be that the whole track pivots at center, it is built for light weight design, it appears to have no raised creeper teeth, for less tearing up the ground or roadways, but would make me question traction. Linn advocated two driving sprocket teeth to keep the track running "true" vs. his Lombard experience with single drive teeth in the middle. Also, Linn wanted to keep his drive sprockets up off the ground, for less wear or chance of getting anything stuck in there. I didn't pick up on the cable-looking belt system, again indicating intentional lightweight design, not heavy duty pulling or load carrying. I guess that's why thy called it a "Speed Cat"? Metal tracked machines of that age were pushing it at a sustained 8 mph, maybe this one could do 15 mph or better?

In the 60's there was a small crawler called a Mead Speedcat,although nothing like the pic. But, I wonder if Mead Morrison had anything to do with making the one in question. Mead Specialties co. built the newer speedcat. Were they in some way connected with the old Mead-Morrison co.? Perhaps the newer company bought the speedcat name from the old one and built there own machine years after? Mead-Morrison was involved in lots of different equipment,perhaps they even tryed the light duty crawlers too.

Thanks! Forgot Mead Morrison made Speed Cat, then this machine would probably be a winch platform, and would explain using a cable in the track? Linn used Mead Morrison winches is about all I know about them, mounted under the cab seat (Std. Oil of CA Linn at West Kern Oil Museum in Taft, CA set up this way), or right behind the cab for using a boom or just to load themselves.

They built crawlers back in the 20's, and those early crawlers had the same basic track design,with just the 3 bottom idlers. They built just about anything to do with hoisting, winches,shovels , lots of atachments. I'd say they would be a good candidate to try making tracks out of cables too.

When I worked around Kenai,Alaska during the 1950s & 60s,survey,utility & Geophysical people used a thing that looked about like that,except they had heated,inclosed cabs.They had very wide pads with no grousers.They could travel about 30 M.P.H. They were called "Weasels". Instead of track rollers,they had two or three rubber tired truck wheels on each side that took the place of upper and lower rollers.

Very interesting. Looks like we may have some kind of Mead Morrison crawler winch platform. The driver seat sits on the engineside, for better control when winching? Can anyone see the winch? The two big fixtures on the back are interesting to, is this for the earthanchor when winching? If it´s not a machine for winching could it have been used for dragging timber? Track does not look that strong but very flexible=fast and that´s against the dragging theory. Hmm... I´m confused, what is it?